*Opinions expressed are solely my own and do not express the views or opinions of my employer
Some exciting news, I’m very thrilled to announce that I’ll be joining Skilledd as part of their very early team. I’d like to express my gratitude to Andre, Jeff & Kuri (thanks to Alex for the intro!) for welcoming me to be part of an exciting mission here. Skilledd in short is a curated tech talent development and marketplace for Southeast Asia. In this article, I’ll share the things about Skilledd that excite me and how they could play a vital role within Southeast Asia tech talent ecosystem. But before I go about it, let’s have a look into the state of supply and demand for technical talent.
Overview
(source: Robert Walters)
One of the main problems that facing companies right now is the difficulty in finding the right talent to fill up the role. The word right here is much bigger than what people might initially think of. There isn’t a set definition of what makes a candidate the right candidate, although the parameters are all the same: Experienced, innovative, and a good culture fit. But the characteristics that make up each of these aspects is different for every company. Nonetheless, technical/hard skills are part of the equation while human skills like creativity, emotional intelligence, and leadership are equally salient.
Furthermore, in today’s rapidly ever-growing digital landscape, any organizations that understand their talent needs may have an unfair advantage. However, the slow-moving recruitment process hampers the edge. This is especially can be seen when hiring for mid-level roles. A solution to this is imperative as demand for top tech talent to outstrip supply over the next few years. As such, demand could be 4x the supply for agile-related skills, while 50% to 60% greater in the case of big data talent.
Mismatch Between Supply & Demand
The gap between what tech talent could offer and what the companies want is indisputable. In fact, filling up technical vacancies are the second hardest after skilled trade in Southeast Asia. Looking into perspective, the skills challenges among Southeast Asian countries are varied, regardless of their geographical location. That being said, both side of the equation has its flaws and need to be fixed fast.
In the study from QS Global Skills Gap, there are substantial gaps between expectation between the standards that employer hold and student skills based on insights provided by 11,000 employers and 16,000 students across the world.
Students respondents perceived creativity, organizational, and problem-solving skills as the top on the list for most important abilities. However, that’s not entirely the case as what the employers value the most are problem-solving, teamwork, and communication in a particular order (noticed that in reality creativity ranked 9th out of 15 according to the employers).
But the blame shouldn’t be on students entirely. One plausible explanation for the mismatch is due to the role of “multiple influencers” such as universities, school counselors, parents, and friends which in the end, creates confusion among students in shaping their thinking.
The study utilized two constituent - importance and satisfaction - in identifying skills deficits.
The importance factor is the assessment of employers identifying a skill as important or very important, while satisfaction includes the assessment of how many employers are satisfied or very satisfied with the particular skills of the candidate they were recruiting. The higher importance factor against the satisfaction resulted in a “skills gap”. A satisfaction score squared to, or outdo the importance factor score is infrequent, however, when it happens, it demonstrates that employer expectations are met. QS CEO, Nunzio Quacquarelli underlines the vital role to be done by universities to prepare graduates for the world of work.
Filling Up The Gap
Skilledd mission resonates in fulfilling the much-needed gap, where technology is the key differentiator in competitive, saturated industries, and possessing the right skills is critical to growth. Let’s take a closer look at the offering for each side of this liquidity equation:
Supply Side - Talent
Job boards don’t have a great reputation when it comes to sourcing the right talent for current positions in a particular organization. However, generally speaking, they’re still the first to come to mind for graduates that are in search of employment or seeking new career opportunities. Conventionally, job seekers would go through the job site and apply it to those that ‘fit’ the requirement. But, the volume does not proportionately define the quality of the candidate. In fact, huge volume tends to create “noise” considering that the effort takes to screen equate trade-off to the productivity time.
Skilledd differentiates themselves from typical recruitment agencies and talent marketplace by providing assessment to the candidates, in which, those profiles that cross a certain standard will be invited to undergo a video/audio interview with Skilledd's Talent Assessors, where they are profiled even further on their communication skills, culture-fit preferences and technical understanding and skills.
This helps companies to have vetted candidates who matched their job opening criteria. On the other end, all candidates can re-take assessments on a monthly basis, to validate that they improve their knowledge and understanding of the skill which they have identified earlier. The results will then be reflected in their profile.
Demand Side - Employer
Hiring tech talents is hard and painstaking. For every talent hired approximately a result of XX man-hours spend on screening candidates, checking through dozens of technical assessments, fit-interviews, and the worst part; drop in productivity time. In the context of a two-sided marketplace for employment, Skilledd identify and accessed a pool of fairly fungible distributor - in which employers can have unlimited access to talent pipeline with regards to their hiring.
In order for Pay-No-Upfront to work, Skilledd has to adequate demand (talent) in place. The captivating part is they offer this service at 0 upfront costs to employers. Hence, they only achieved success, if only the hiring company manage to get the right talent they’re looking for.
The quality control of the supply model is the X-factor here - companies can have the conviction that the hires can reach a threshold within the aspect of quality and technical-fit, and will be able to scale with their needs. Employers will soon have access to a network of talent that significantly enhances:
Hiring momentum: Think of it as “GCP for Recruitment” where companies can scale as they would within their own underpinning needs.
Quality assurance: Quality control of supply flow.
What’s Next?
Talent acquisition has entered a phase of rapid change which has made it more difficult for companies to attract the right talent. Similarly, talents that understand the skills gap they’re facing have the edge of getting hired compared to those that don’t. That being said, it’s an interesting journey for Skilledd as we endeavoring into a mission to help connect both sides.